


San Fran

by coeurastronaute



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clarke is an artist, F/F, Lexa is a writer, The hipsters in san fran au, named Jeff, she has a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-07 07:52:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14666640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coeurastronaute/pseuds/coeurastronaute
Summary: indie painter/artist clarke and bohemian writer lexa. basically just them as hipsters. possibly living in san francisco.





	1. Chapter 1

The notebook exploded into dozens of pages against the wall, like a sad, lonely kind of firework. The cat wasn’t even bothered, blinking slowly and turning its head to the side after adjusting slightly. Not even the stalking owner of said notebook and semi-owner of said cat, huffing through the room, shoulders hunched and hands gripped, face stoically full of wrath, bothered the feline who had grown accustomed to such things. 

The apartment was pristine, was perfectly packed and placed without precariously situated possessions and filled with purposeful placements. The mess on the floor was an anomaly that wouldn’t last long. But it did stay there, untouched and bitterly rotting as the hurler ignored it completely after the outburst.

Frustrated and furrowed, Lexa walked once more through the mess, pulling on her coat as she moved to the kitchen. The cat watched her with a yawn. She appeared once more, shoes on this time. He watched her move through again from his position on the window sill, furiously tying her scarf around her neck. 

“I’m going out,” she said to no one in particular. She’d never admit it was to the cat, her unwilling housemate. 

She’d also never admit that it was half to the pages of manuscript and notebook that lay dead upon the floor there after being flung from her office with such unending rage she thought she’d never be able to resuscitate it. 

Both things were the only other living entities in the house, and both were her most constant companions. Both annoyed her. Both were unwanted. Both kept her up at night and drove her mad. 

With a decided nod after surveying the crime scene once more, she slammed the door behind her, unaware that the cat did not even flinch at the antics.

* * *

The wind whipped, violent and vicious, through the narrow streets as the writer bitterly made her way through the city. Bundled up against the cold and her own thoughts, Lexa furrowed and followed her feet fearing only the freezing way the cold front sliced through her hems. 

The smells changed with each block. The warm yeasty thread that lasted a few shops from the bakery. The lingering salt and fish that were a few blocks from that. The steam and sizzle of the metal on metal contact of the trollies. The city smelled and ebbed and moved within these ways, often lingering and following aimless walkers that moved through the city with a lost kind of worry. 

She wasn’t sure how she found herself in the park, nor was she certain where exactly she was. This was a habit, to walk and simply not realize where she would end up. It wasn’t that she was in search of the untraceable spark of inspiration, but rather that she was direly attempting to run from the plethora of problems in her work. 

Her feet kept moving, her legs kept flexing and she refused to stay still while her brain turned over things, fiddled with them, prodded and peeled and picked apart things. She did not notice the smells so much, at least not overtly. She didn’t notice the traffic, nor the noise, nor the other pedestrians, nor the time of day or the distance travelled. She simply had to escape it all and face it at once. 

It took her brain a few minutes to catch back up with her stalled body. It walked right by and had to loop around to where she sat on a bench, quiet and still. The sun was still up, still bright despite the chill that shivered through the trees, the entire way up the branches and to the tips of the leaves themselves. Lexa sniffled and felt the same way. 

But Lexa sat there and poured over her work because it was a welcomed distraction from her life. The pressure to produce something, anything, and it be as well-recieved as her first work. The pressure from her sister to go on a date, to go out of the house. The attempt to refuse to think of Costia for one more second. It was a lot of work to avoid so much at once, but the writer took on the cause valiantly. 

Bundled, hiding her chin in her scarf and her hands in her pockets, she sat in the park and watched without seeing, heard without listening, existed with living. It was much easier. 

As much as she tried, Lexa took no notice of anyone at all for the longest time. She watched faces walk by, she followed them and attempted to care, to see them, to try, but she felt very much momentary and singular, wrapped up in her avoidance and thoughts. 

She sat until it was well past dark before hailing a taxi and returning home.

* * *

“This is stupid,” Lexa hissed as she tugged on her collar and pushed her glasses up her nose. 

“One night I ask for you to be somewhat human. Can you try? I have worked hard on this. Which you might now if you picked up your phone, answered your emails or texts, listened to voicemails, left the house,” Anya listed, counting each method on a different finger. 

“I leave the house,” Lexa pursed her lips. 

“Have a good night. Try not to make anyone cry. And don’t worry, okay? Mingle, be merry, it’s okay to live, Lex.” 

“I hate mingling.” She tugged once more at her collar, loosening her tie. 

“Dammit, Lexa. Then just go home. Don’t consider that I sat at every reading, meeting, and schmucky academic-infested dinner and lecture for you. Because I’m proud, and that’s what family does for each other,” her sister whispered, defeated and bothered. Lexa clenched her jaw and took it. 

“Well, I’m going to stay,” Lexa shrugged, guilty and sorry and not knowing why. 

“Oh, don’t do me any favours.” With a toss of her hands in the air in defeat, her sister disappeared into the crowd, dismissing that and plastering her work smile in place. 

Lexa sighed and watch her mingle across the room. She turned to the bar and raised her hand, signalling for a drink, wishing she was capable of feeling those normal things that made her sister not have to put up with these things. 

Two glasses in, and Lexa sat in the same spot swirling the honey-brown liquor in her tumbler. She tried. She put up with conversations for longer than normal and she met her sisters eyes across the crowded room and offered a small smile of apology. 

But her patience wore thin. The crowds, the people, the talking. It was too much for too long. 

“You look like you have the right idea,” a voice smiled beside her, saddling up to the stool and holding her hand up for a drink from the busy bartenders. 

“Always safe at the bar.” 

“Not a fan of art?” Lexa swallowed and nearly coughed when she met blue eyes and that breathless smile. She simple stared, her glass stuck halfway up to her lips, her mouth open and stunned. She watched the girl turn and order her drink, watched her thank the bartender and sip from the flute of champagne. Still, she couldn’t bring the whiskey to her own lips despite the dryness in her own mouth. “I’ll take that as a no?” 

“What?” She furrowed and looked away, taking a gulp and putting the glass down. 

“The show, the event, the opening, the art? Hiding out at the bar doesn’t really scream enthusiast,” the blonde observed. 

“Oh, yeah, no, yes,” Lexa articulated, looking away again. She stared at the bar. It was safe to look there. “I’ve seen it. My sister put it together. I got invited to bolster her guest list pretentious level.” 

“You think you carry that much weight?” 

“I don’t. But my name does. Lexa Woods,” she held out her hand for the first time that night. 

“The writer,” the blonde nodded, slowly taking her hand. 

“See? You feel a bit more pretentious just breathing the same air, don’t you?” 

“A bit, yeah,” she smiled and Lexa looked back down, taking another drink when her hand was freed. She couldn’t look. “I almost hate to admit, I never picked up your book.” 

“Good. I don’t have to answer any questions about it then.” 

“I have read your works though. Your opinion pieces in the Times and Atlantic Monthly and a few other places.”

“Those rags,” Lexa grinned for the first time. 

“Your funnier than I would have guessed. I mean, I thought you’d be clever, almost like you’re forever smirking in each word. But not exactly what I expected,” the blonde confessed. 

“I aim to exceed expectations.” 

“Mission accomplished.” 

Lexa refused to look up again. Her cheeks were burning and she wasn’t sure what else to do. 

“Clarke, I have a collector I’d like you to meet,” Anya said, growing louder as she approached. “Oh good, I’m glad you two finally got to meet.” 

It slowly pieced together as Lexa began to think of something other than the legs of the blonde as they crossed under the bar. It occupied more of her brain than she’d be willing to admit. 

“Clarke, this is my sister-”

“The writer,” the blonde filled in. “You didn’t tell me who she was.” 

“You never asked,” Anya smiled, putting her arm around her sister who sat up slightly. “Lex, this is Clarke Griffin. The artist of this show.” 

“We’ve been somewhat introduced.” 

“Thanks for lending your pretentiousness to my show,” Clarke grinned, standing and leaning towards her slightly, sharing a grin. Lexa saw her dimples and just nodded after a tight smile. 

“Thanks for reading my book.” 

“You got me there.” 

“Lex, go mingle. I’ve had people asking for you all night,” her sister insisted, leading the artist away. Lexa leaned forward slightly, wishing to follow though remained sitting at the bar. 

For the rest of the night, the writer found herself watching the artist. Not meaning to, but not being able to stop. The whiskey made her woozy, made her cheeks blush, but she thought Clarke was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen and she wasn’t sure how that could happen. 

She met her eyes once and looked away quickly, her cheeks on fire and burning her brain alive. Clarke smiled at her and that made it worse. Lexa adjusted her glasses and looked away hurriedly.

* * *

She suffered through four more of her sisters events in hopes of seeing the painter again. She’d never admit it to her sister, and in fact emphatically denied any motives for wanting to go other than the free bar. But that was secondary to seeing those eyes. 

Lexa couldn’t write. She expected to go home and write, but suddenly she couldn’t. She even used her sister to send her own book along to the artist with a note she agonized over and ruined fifteen copies trying to perfect. And after she did, she felt like a tool and hurriedly got it back before it was delivered. 

“Are we going to make this a habit?” a voice smiled as it sat in the chair next to Lexa’s. Instantly the writer froze. 

“I was hoping,” she admitted honestly. 

“Your sister is good. And very talented at what she does. I’ve been up to my ears in work,” Clarke smiled, electing to order the same as Lexa. “How have you been?” 

“Haven’t been able to write in weeks.” 

“I’m sure your publishers like that.” 

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t answer my phone. Or emails. Just ask Anya for a comprehensive list of things I don’t do.” 

“I’m sure everyone loves that.” 

“My agent will show up on my doorstep every few weeks to make sure I’m alive and things for me to sign.” 

“I picked the wrong field.” 

“I don’t know about that. I spent a day staring at your paintings. I think it’s amazing.” 

“You spent the day?” 

Lexa cleared her throat and felt her muscles tighten in her neck. She furiously looked away, afraid of the admission. 

“I read your book,” Clarke confessed. 

“Now I just starting to like you. Why would you go and do a thing like that?” 

For a moment, the two shared a small smile before looking away bashfully, neither able to think of much else. Lexa finished her drink and summoned all the courage she could find. 

“Do you want to get out of here?”

“God, yes,” the painter grinned.

* * *

Early morning was quiet in the streets, but in her head, it was crashing and loud. Lexa struggled to measure every word, so as not to make a fool of herself with the gorgeous painter. It was proving to be a full-time distraction. 

But Clarke didn’t notice. She simply liked listening to Lexa when she allowed herself to rant about something, the way her hands would be agitated and flail in front of her before being tucked into her pockets to corral them. 

“So the first one came out just after graduation, and then the second was my Masters’ thesis,” Lexa answered, watching her feet move. “And this one is taking me longer than both put together.” 

“Sometimes that’s just how it works.” 

“I guess.”

“Your sister said you get very distracted when you’re writing. Very focused on it.” Clarke chanced a look at the writer beside her who seemed to shrink into the coat that was too big for her. 

“My sister talks too much.” 

“It’s not a bad thing,” the painter assured her. 

“I think she’s still worried that I’m twelve and getting kicked out of school for failing because I wouldn’t talk.” 

“She’s your sister. That’s what sisters do. I guess.” 

“Sometimes I feel bad, for everything she gave up to take care of me. And I didn’t make it easy on her. I still don’t.” Lexa was unsure where the confession came from, but the lights were one and the city was full of empty arteries. 

“I think she’s doing okay now. You know, she kind of saved me. I was dead broke before that show. Ready to pack it all in, take a job at some marketing firm spitting out magazine ads. Ready to head back to DC to tell my mom she was right all along.” 

“Anya has a way of swooping in,” Lexa smiled, oddly proud of her sister.

They stood on the corner and waited for the light to change, unsure of which way to go, unsure of how many more hours they could brave the cold and the night and each other. 

“This was much better than that stuffy party,” Clarke confessed. 

“It was.” 

“I should head home, before I freeze.”

“I live just over there,” Lexa hitched a finger towards her house. “If you maybe want a drink or something.” 

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” Clarke eyed her. 

“I wasn’t. I hadn’t. No. Yeah. I wouldn’t. I didn’t. Okay,” Lexa swallowed and stuttered and couldn’t bring her hand down from signalling the direction of her home. 

“Because if I go to your house, I’ll be tempted to sleep with you,” Clarke continued, not hearing Lexa’s ineptitude. “Because you’re kind of gorgeous. You have this like sexy, bookish thing that weirdly enough does it for me.” 

“Yeah?” Lexa grinned, delighted at the news. 

“And I never thought it would. But here we are. You got this broody, tortured past thing and your face. I sleep with people too soon. And I won’t sleep with you.”

“Okay.” 

“I want to.” 

“Yeah?” 

“But I won’t.” 

“So no drink?” 

“What?” Clarke finally looked up, realizing she was having a conversation. 

“Maybe we could get a drink or something some other time?” 

“Okay.” 

“So the nerdy thing works for you?” 

“It really does,” Clarke smiled, side and broad and full, much to Lexa’s enjoyment. “You’re so fucking cute.” 

“Here I was worried you were way out of my league.” 

“No way.” 

“Would you like to go out sometime?” 

“I’m not sure.” 

“Why?” 

With barely a movement that Lexa could register, Clarke looked at her lips and stepped closer. Her mind short-circuited as Clarke’s hand felt to her neck, her thumb on her jaw. 

Clarke kissed her. Gentle and soft, it was nothing more than lips on lips until they started to move. Lexa held her breath as the city took no notice. The lights on the corner changed and they could have moved across the street. Instead they stood there, hands tugging onto clothes and coats, lips moving victoriously between the two.


	2. Chapter 2

From its perch in the bay window, the cat yawned and appraised the cars moving through the street. It saw the biker coasting down the hill, and it saw the family taking their daughter to school. It stretched, adjusting as the sun peaked over the opposite roof, and let it warm its belly while the big green eyes never ceased observing the familiar sites of its street. 

On the sidewalk, the housekeeper stared at the cat as it licked its shoulder and finally met her eyes when it finished the beginning stages of its bath. With a sigh and a tightening of her lips, Indra swore at the damn animal as she dug in her bag for the keys to the familiar house. 

Even when the door opened and shut, the cat didn’t move. He yawned, shifted, and tucked his arms under himself, king of all he saw and indifferent to any other breathing soul in the house. Indra hung her bag on the hook. The same hook she always used. She slipped off her coat and hung it beside her bag. The pattern existed as it had for many years, and all the while the cat slept in the window. 

There were many scenes the housekeeper witnessed upon her weekly entry to this home in particular. By far, it was one of the more interesting homes on her route, and because of that, because of the girl, she took special care and interest there. 

The house was spotless, at least as far as she could tell. It was sparse. There’d been more furniture before the breakup, but now, Lexa devoted herself to writing. It made Indra’s job easier, though also more difficult now that the job became checking on Lexa. 

With a shake of her head, she picked up the empty whiskey bottle that sat on the edge of the desk. Papers were thrown about the floor and desk, pinned up, tapped on, strung through the wall. Amidst the organized chaos that was part of the process Indra was still learning, everything seemed exactly like it was in its proper place. 

The glass that went with the empty bottle was observed tucked beneath the chin of a sleeping writer, curled up tightly on the couch. A pen was stuck behind her ear, ink on her arm, words speared on her body, jotted haphazardly, a piece of paper crumpled in her hand. 

Sometimes, Indra worried about her. She started each project with order, with methodical, precise writing which inevitably descended into an almost heathen, animalistic mania. With a dissatisfied huff, Indra nudged a half-open notebook with her foot and shook her head, knowing full well what stage they were at in this endeavour. 

“I was gone for one week,” Indra muttered, bending over to pick up the stray cigarette butts that missed the other stray glass of whiskey. 

“Don’t move anything!” Lexa groaned as curtains were flung open. The cat jumped and sat itself against the fireplace, angry and sullen for the disruption to its day. Indra glared back. 

“Get up.” 

“I’m up,” Lexa lied, nuzzling the bottle and pen a little tighter. 

“I’m making food. And you’re not going to fight,” the housekeeper turned back towards the couch with a victorious nod to herself at the pain she caused to the inhabitant of the couch. 

“I’m fine.” 

“You’re a goddamn mess.” 

The only response was a grunt because Lexa couldn’t argue too much with it. Instead, she curled into herself and tried not to vomit. The clanging of pans and preparation of food rang in Lexa’s head as she propped herself up, wiped the drool from her mouth and blinked against the daylight. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Lexa mumbled as she trudged into the kitchen, wincing as she sipped on the remnants of the bottle. 

“I do, actually,” the housekeeper shook her head after grabbing the bottle and tossing it in the trash. “You know two people in the world, and one is your sister. Someone has to make sure your liver lasts at least until you’re thirty.” 

“I know… people.” 

“Alright.” 

“I finished last night,” Lexa changed the subject and sat at the table. “It’s finally done, Indra. And it only took a bottle of whiskey and three days with my door locked and phone off, but I put it all together, and I slept,” she looked dreamily out the window staring at the tiny back yard. “God. I slept so well.” 

“I’m not picking you up off the floor anymore,” Indra muttered, not looking at the girl at the table. She raised her kids already. She had six grandkids and an entire family she already raised, and yet here she was. 

“That was one time.” 

“Still. You know better.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I am.” 

The kitchen got quiet, filled only with the noise of eggs frying and toast popping from the toaster. Lexa’s head swirled all over and she wanted to die, but instead she placed her palms flat on the cool table and tried to stop from falling out into the world. She wanted to tell Indra thank you, but it was impossible, and she wanted to be someone that people didn’t know only knew two people. She wanted to be happy, and she didn’t want to lie when she said it. 

“I was gone one week and you descend into an animal,” Indra complained, slipping a plate on the table and turning away quickly, wiping her hands in the towel on her shoulder. 

“Yeah.”

“How is it?” 

“You going to read it?” Lexa asked as she took a bite of toast and tentatively watched her housekeeper’s back as she began scrubbing dishes. 

“Of course.” 

“These are good eggs.” 

“Is that story of yours any good?” 

“I don’t know,” Lexa shrugged, mouth full and confidence waiver with the actual question and filtering in her kidneys and liver. 

“I have work to do.” 

“Okay.” Lexa watched Indra leave the kitchen, oddly confused that her best friend was an older housekeeper who visited once a week. 

By the time Lexa finished eating and took a shower, she felt almost human. And her house was immaculate. Her clothes didn’t hang from the hamper, and her bed had fresh sheets and the pillows looked fluffy and she was continually baffled how Indra did it. The living room was perfect, not betraying at all the fact that there’d been genius thrown all over it. 

The cat tucked into itself on the edge of the couch and Lexa ran her finger’s along its back which it enjoyed despite the disdain it held for that fact. Indra turned another page at the large desk that took up the living room window. 

“Well, what do you think?” Lexa tried, sitting on the couch. 

“You should dry your hair. It’s cold outside.” 

“I meant about the–”

“Sh.”

“Alright.” 

She lasted about three minutes of sitting there watching her housekeeper read her manuscript. Three minutes of fiddling with her fingers and watching the sun not move at all from the lines on the floor. Three minutes of rubbing the white spot on the cats chest which turned into its belly and then down its black back. Three minutes of excruciating waiting. 

“Can you tell me what you-”

“Sh.” 

“Alright.” 

With a disinterested purr, the cat hopped to the floor and Lexa stood, picking up her phone and dialling her sister, remembering that it’d been too long since she’d returned a phone call. 

“Indra’s reading my first copy,” Lexa blurted as she moved into another room, closing the doors to the living room behind her. 

“I know.”

“Why do you and my housekeeper text?” 

“Why do you let your housekeeper be your editor?” 

Lexa could only grunt and furrow her brow at the argument. She paced through the library which was simply piles of books stacked against each wall, and she peaked through the glass of the windows at the woman at her desk. 

“That’s where you’ve been then?” Anya asked. 

“Yeah. Finishing.” 

“There’s a party tonight.” 

“I can’t.” 

“You’re done with work. The only thing left is to let Indra read it and then ship it off to your actual editor. Come have a drink tonight.” 

“I’ve had enough to drink.” 

“Lexa, I’m asking to see my sister wrapped in whatever excuse I can come up with, and you could at least humour me.” 

“Anya.” 

“I’ll come over there.” 

“Indra told you to get me out.” 

“It’s not my fault your best friend is your housekeeper and I know when she comes.” 

“I have to finish-”

“Clarke asked about you last week.” 

“Oh? I mean,” Lexa cleared her throat. “I mean. Oh, yeah?” 

“I’ll see you at nine.” 

With another grunt, Lexa shoved her phone in her pocket and nearly tripped over the cat that bolted as she opened the door. 

“Did you-”

“Sh.” 

“Alright.”

* * *

“You look like you have the right idea,” Clarke grinned and saddled up to the bar beside the beautiful girl who blushed into her drink and pushed her glasses up her nose a bit. 

A month or so between visits, and Clarke zeroed in on her quicker than she would have liked, though she was able to avoid the writer for a little while. The zigzag she made through the crowd was subtle, though shamefully eager and short. It was easier because it wasn’t her show, and it was much more fun to get lost in the crowd. But when Anya smiled and pointed towards the bar, Clarke couldn’t help herself. 

“Not much has changed then,” Clarke held up her hand to signal two drinks at the end of the bar. “Still brooding at bars and hiding from your sister.” 

“It works well for me.” 

“It does.”

“Haven’t seen you at one of these in a while,” Lexa observed, taking the new cup and hoping to find courage located at the bottom of it. 

“Because you haven’t been out in a while.” 

“My sister says you asked about me.” 

“Wondering when I can expect another work of staggering brilliance in my local bookstore.” 

“I finished today. Well, this morning. Yeah, I finished this morning actually. Yes. This morning. I finished. Writing,” Lexa swallowed and sighed and killed herself for not being able to form sentences when they moved past a handful of words. Anxiously she adjusted on the chair and pushed the glasses up her nose. 

“So soon then?” Clarke blushed at the anxiousness.

“Um, maybe a few more months.” The writer resigned herself to short phrases. That was safest. 

“Well, I am very excited.” 

“Can we get out of here again? I really hate these things.” 

“Yeah, alright,” Clarke took the last sip of her drink and grinned.

* * *

The night was chilly and the rain was far away in the bay, ready to pounce upon the city whenever everyone went to bed. The lights were all angry, burning against the night and shimmering softly beneath their wrath as the two walked through the city. There was no direction in their feet, no gnawing pull leading them around the area, but instead simple happenstance moved them, pushed them along with a breeze and the burn of whiskey on their tongues. 

“But why is she your best friend?” Clarke chuckled. 

“I don’t know. I like her.” 

“That makes sense.”

“You kissed me, you know,” Lexa remembered. “You kissed me.” 

“Yeah, I did.” 

“Okay.” 

“I want to do it again,” Clarke smiled. “I would have done it sooner, but you disappeared.” 

“I have a cat.” 

“Okay.” 

“I have a cat because the girl I think I might have loved left me, and now I have a cat.” 

“Alright.”

“Okay.” 

“Is it a nice cat?” 

“I mean, not particularly,” Lexa reasoned, thinking deeply about it. “I mean, he’s not mean or anything like that. Just kind of indifferent.” 

“I wouldn’t have thought you as a cat owner.” 

“Yeah, me neither.” 

“Do you want to introduce me?” 

“Sure.” 

“Smooth move with the whole pet angle.” 

“The first time he’d be useful.”

* * *

“I haven’t done that in a while,” Lexa cleared her throat and pulled the sheets up higher. They barely covered her co-inhabitant’s hips, but she didn’t care. She needed to feel covered, to escape. 

“Could have fooled me,” Clarke chuckled, hand splayed across her stomach. She felt Lexa’s hand move along her ribs, felt her lips against her shoulder. “I’ve been thinking of doing this since I saw you in that party.” 

“The glasses thing, huh?” 

“Yeah.”


	3. Chapter 3

There was a way to the city after dark, so that something was always happening. But on the rainy, dreary Friday night, Clarke had something in particular in mind to occupy her time. That was how she found herself skipping over puddles and tightening her raincoat up against the squalls and wind of San Francisco’s wind and rain as she made her way downtown.

There was a little invitation that hung on her fridge at her apartment, and Clarke tried to ignore it every single day. She didn’t want to go to the reading. She hadn’t heard from the cute, nervous author since Clarke snuck out of her bedroom a few weeks ago. It all made sense, as to why, but she kind of hoped she’d made enough of an impression to hear from her.

It was a packed event, but Clarke wiggled her way and took a seat in the middle of the crowd as everyone awaited the first reading of the newest novel from wunderkind Lexa Woods. She listened to people around her as they beamed and speculated and conversed about their favorite parts of the last novel.

While Clarke skimmed the room and saw the novel-types that wrote important articles about things like this, she looked at the hand out and the picture of the author that was tucked on the page. People were beaming and dissecting her work, and yet Clarke was the one that knew about the cat she didn’t like but loved anyway, and who knew about the whiskey and the glasses and what Lexa’s sheets smelled like, and how her voice sounded at four in the morning after three orgasms.

Across the crowded room, Clarke caught sight of Anya and tried to make herself blend in. She didn’t want to have a conversation, and she didn’t really know what to say.

Luckily, the host for the evening Q and A, and reading came out as the lights dimmed somewhat. Nervously, Clarke settled in and cheered when Lexa emerged a second later, once her accolades were recited.

She was mildly self-effacing, in a somewhat humble sort of way. She was brilliant, but maybe didn’t know how much so, and Clarke found herself captivated by the author on the stage as she sat there and took questions from both the audience and the moderator.

Halfway through, Lexa did a double-take in the middle of answering something about being a young, female writer. Clarke smiled a smile reserved for the writer, and Lexa adjusted her glasses and returned it slightly after stumbling slightly on her train of thought. From that moment on, her eyes drifted to about six rows back and the blonde, curious, confused, and encouraged.

“How much does your life influence what you write?” the moderator continued down a line of questions. “You write along the themes of family, pain, past, secrets, and the intersection of the uncertainty of the future and society. You write of these secrets, and you are very secretive.”

“I’m private,” Lexa corrected, adjusting slightly in her seat. “I think anyone who says they aren’t influenced by their life is lying. It’s formed how I view the world, but I don’t purposefully address things. I just tell stories.”

“Some have claimed that your first work, your Masters thesis, was as close to an autobiography as could be, is that true?”

“I told a story that I had to tell.”

“The secrets continue,” he smiled, sensing her discomfort and electing to switch paths.

Despite herself, Clarke was only more intrigued by the writer who now nervously avoided looking in her direction. She smiled and watched Lexa relax.

* * *

After the reading, Lexa felt impossibly eager to find the girl who proved to be a figment of her imagination. When she woke up exactly twenty-three days ago, she was certain she’d never hear from the artist again. It made her afraid to go out to Anya’s events, and it made her afraid to call.

But she locked eyes with Clarke during the question segment, and she felt a little skip in her brain, as if she’d died for an instant, and all neurons refused to work. It might not have registered as more than searching for an answer to a question, but Clarke knew, and Lexa knew that she knew.

But whatever bravery she had left in her, was gone the moment the applause died and she joined the mingling. Inundated with more conversations and oddly enjoying herself, Lexa was constantly on guard. She was convinced one of two terrible things would happen, namely that if she didn’t pay attention, Clarke would sneak up on her, or worse yet, disappear without a word, leaving her wondering what it all meant for another extended amount of time.

When she woke up alone, exactly twenty-three days ago, Lexa didn’t know how to feel, and if she were being honest, she still hadn’t unpacked it. And it was because of that, that she excused herself to the bar.

“You look like you have the right idea,” a voice joined her as soon as she got her drink and savored the first sip. “Gin and tonic.”

They were quiet until the bartender slid over another glass. Lexa looked at Clarke slightly before drinking again.

“The glasses and nerdy thing, right?” Lexa grinned, almost devilishly, if she would have had that in her.

“I can’t stop thinking about you. I’ve tried.”

“You left.”

“I’m good at that.”

“I stay,” Lexa finished her drink and stood up a little straighter. “I’m someone who stays. I’m good at it.”

Clarke swallowed and nodded. Stern as Lexa was, she adjusted her glasses and sighed, betraying some nerves and an unsteadiness to herself in the situation. She couldn’t meet Clarke’s eyes except in tiny glimpses.

“I want to stay, if that’s okay?”

Very seriously, almost too seriously, Lexa weighed the words, furrowing with the new information. Clarke smiled because she was absolutely crazy for someone who thought like that.

“What if you leave again?”

“I’ll do my best not to.”

“The last time I asked someone, they lied and said they’d never leave. I like your answer better.”

It was that instant, that moment, after twenty-three days and just a handful of meetings, after listening to the humble, talented, wondrous genius of a nervous girl introduce her book to the world, after finding her in the bar, with just those words, that Clarke realized she was in love. She would look back on it fondly, she decided. That even when Lexa looked away to order another drink, unaware as to what was happening beside her, that Clarke decided she’d tell her one day, because as much as it was simple, witty banter, she was telling the truth. She had no good reason to leave that day other than fear. She had no good reason to offer to stay, except for the exact same reason.

* * *

It happened gradually, and all at once, and for that, Lexa was grateful. When she woke up the morning after her reading, and found an artist sketching in her favorite chair with a cat curled up against her side, she didn’t want to believe it.

Instead, she poured herself a cup of coffee without saying anything, sat down in her usual spot at the usual end of the table with her usual red notebook and regular old, usual pen, and let herself jot down notes and ideas and things.

Clarke wasn’t dumb though. She sat stark still and refused to move, as if doing so would make Lexa bolt or something. Instead, she drew the same line, over and over again with the flourish that artists sometimes give for no reason at all, and she took little peaks at the girl at the table in the old, bleach-abused track shirt.

And like that, there was almost a routine.

Lexa liked routines, Clarke learned, which was an adventure. She hated how much she loved her cat, despite how much she’d argue otherwise. She was very particular about her methods, and Clarke respected that.

But when they were together, Lexa was different. She kissed like she was desperate for nothing more than that feeling. When she wrote, she was maniacal. But all other times of her life, Lexa was so restrained. She was absolutely fascinating.

To make matters worse, she said things that made Clarke’s head and heart explode. The third week of dating, Lexa mumbled something about liking the order that came to traffic jams. A few days later, as she hovered in the kitchen with the cat, and Clarke cooked and made a mess, she muttered an old spell that her grandmother once prayed and sipped her wine. Not long after that, Clarke learned that one of her favorite things was to win an argument by making Lexa throw her hands up in the air at the illogical nature of Clarke’s insistences.

Dating Lexa was filled with learning things.

It was hard at times, with the shows and the book tour that came with inevitable success. And though Lexa refused to believe that Clarke would stay, she did. She stayed so long, in fact, that Lexa got used to it.

* * *

The notebook exploded into dozens of pages against the wall, like a sad, lonely kind of firework. The cat wasn’t even bothered, blinking slowly and turning its head to the side after adjusting slightly. Not even the stalking owner of said notebook and semi-owner of said cat, huffing through the room, shoulders hunched and hands gripped, face stoically full of wrath, bothered the feline who had grown accustomed to such things. 

The apartment was pristine, was perfectly packed and placed without precariously situated possessions and filled with purposeful placements. The mess on the floor was an anomaly that wouldn’t last long. But it did stay there, untouched and bitterly rotting as the hurler ignored it completely after the outburst.

Frustrated and furrowed, Lexa walked once more through the mess and poured herself a drink. For a week, Clarke was away visiting her parents. Lexa was home and eager for more staying, but something messed with her head, and she just couldn’t… couldn’t… word, right.

She looked at Clarke’s coffee cup that sat, unwashed and a reminder of their last night together a few days before, and she realized it was difficult to write when she was happy, which then led to the realization that she was, in fact, for the first time in her life, happy.

And it absolutely left her fucking irate.

“Lexa! What the fuck am I just hearing about Clarke Griffin and you?” her sister stormed in a moment later as Lexa stared at her notebook on the ground and debated arson.

She felt her muscle tense between her shoulder blades.

It should have been expected, for her sister to appear. She heard her phone buzzing almost non-stop in the other room for almost two hours before the inevitable explosion.

Everything was changing, and everything was different, and she felt the tight grasp of control slipping out of her hands despite her stranglehold on it.

“Please get out,” Lexa sighed and grit her teeth as she gripped the counter.

“I will not get out,” her sister pursed her lips and stepped over the notebook on the ground. “This is insane. Months, and you haven’t told me anything!”

“Please get out.”

“Are you kidding me? This is amazing news, and I need to know everything. You can’t–”

“Get out!” Lexa bellowed, shaking her head from side to side. She closed her eyes and tried to take a deep breath.

“Hey, don’t you start yelling at me–”

“Anya! Leave me alone!”

“If you’re having an ep–”

“Get out!” she barked again, finally facing her sister. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

The silence that followed was enough.

But Anya weathered storms like that before, and it did not surprise her that it was happening. Instead, she just nodded to herself, crossed her arms, and waited for her sister to relax somewhat.

“You’re up in your head, aren’t you?”

“Please.”

“You know how to deal with this,” Anya softened. “I should be able to talk to you about dating someone. I can be mad at you. You don’t get to hold the monopoly on feeling things. Get over–”

“You think I haven’t tried to be different? You think I haven’t wanted to not be like this?” Lexa scoffed and shook her head. “It’s not from lack of effort.”

It was things like that, that broke Anya’s heart. And as much as she wanted to hug her sister, she couldn’t do anything like that. It would have been counterproductive. Instead, she moved to pick up the notebook.

“Don’t. I have to,” Lexa murmured.

“Okay.”

Instead, Anya sat at the table and waited the fifteen minutes it took her sister to regain herself.

“What if she figures me out, and leaves?” Lexa sighed. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Not everyone is Costia.”

“Clarke isn’t,” she nodded, almost to herself. “Anya, there’s a beautiful girl who likes me and smiles and makes my heart feel like its tap dancing, and she often doesn’t wear pants and my old rowing shirt from college, and that’s all, and what if she leaves?”

“She won’t.”

“She will.”

“From what I’ve heard– you know– the only reason I found out about you dating my client,” Anya guilted, half with a smile, “Clarke can’t stop talking about you. She beams. I saw one of her pieces, and it’s… it’s… “

With a shake of her head and smile, Anya pulled out her phone and found a picture before sliding it across for her sister to take a look at.

“I don’t know what this means,” Lexa furrowed and stared at the art that didn’t make sense to her.

“She’s in love with you.”

Lexa just furrowed harder with the answer and stared more intently, looking for something like that in the brush strokes. Once, she almost tricked herself into seeing it, though she just couldn’t.

“I don’t see it.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” her sister grinned.

* * *

Almost a year after her sister found out, almost a year of thinking and not thinking and growing and becoming someone who was happy and still lived, Lexa realized that she had to do something.

Everything happened so slowly, so calmly, so easily, that it snuck up, right into her lap. She realized it as she had her hand on the small of Clarke’s back at some dinner party of a friend of a friend. She realized it as she snoozed on the grass at the park with her head in Clarke’s lap while she read or sketched or napped herself. She realized it in the morning when she woke up with lips on her neck and a thigh already between her own, in that lethargic kind of need that settled between their bodies.

She had a cat from a girl she once though she loved, but that girl got sick of her brain, sick of her mind, and she left. Plain and simple, she marked Lexa unloveable, and she disappeared to be happy.

Clarke got irrationally angry and protective after hearing that story, which was the funniest thing that Lexa had ever seen.

That was a moment, too.

As the water ran, and Lexa brushed her teeth, she thought of all those things, and she thought too much about something she was trying to write, and failed to see. She spit and stared at Clarke in the mirror as she tried to have a conversation despite flossing. It was about her father’s birthday, and by now, Lexa was good at deciphering such things, though that was the last thing on her mind.

“I’m difficult to love,” Lexa swallowed and nodded to herself, pushing the glasses up on her nose as they slipped with the movement. Clarke stopped. “I’m a difficult person to be around sometimes, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t fix it, not completely. It’s okay if that’s not okay. But I love you. I know I love you because I didn’t love Costia, and what I feel for you is so much more. It must be love, logically. What I want you to know, is that you don’t have to love me. I just hope that despite me, you’ll still love me.”

There was never really a moment when Clarke knew why or what Lexa was talking about. Sometimes conversations just happened, right there in the middle of something as mundane as making breakfast or walking to the grocery store.

Lexa put her toothbrush back in her mouth and resumed her routine, avoiding Clarke’s eyes in the bathroom mirror. Clarke was stuck, rigid and frozen, and very unsure of where it’d come from, only learning Lexa well enough to know that to have that many words meant she’d been thinking it for a while.

“I’m difficult to love,” Clarke promised. Lexa kept brushing her teeth. “I am. I get moody and irrational and I like a nice mess from time to time. It wasn’t hard to fall in love with you. It happened right under the red light the first night I met you. It happened again at your reading. I love you. I’m in love with you, and I’d like to stay.”

She smiled. Clarke smiled, too, and went back to flossing as Lexa finished, spit, and rinsed her toothbrush.

Clarke rinshed her mouth, and despite their normal routine, Lexa didn’t move from the bathroom door. Instead, her smile was busting her cheeks and she swallowed Clarke in a hug, twirling her around the small room.

* * *

The party was the same crowd that asked her what the ending of her last book meant because they only skimmed it. Lexa excused herself and made her way to the bar, dissatisfied with their nonexistent selection of snacks and eager to find her girlfriend and escape to that fish taco place down on Lynn Street.

She absently wondered if there would ever come a day when she told her sister no when it came to those boring parties she threw. The answer was obvious, but still, Lexa allowed her imagination to flex with the thought as she smiled and sipped her whiskey.

Her goal shifted to getting slightly drunk and taking Clarke home after getting a very unhealthy snack by the bay, and breaking in the new bed Clarke made them get in her ongoing quest to help Lexa modernize her home. Modernize, Lexa was learning, simply meant buying actual furniture.

“Looks like you’ve got the right idea,” a voice joined her, earning a smile.

“Gin and tonic for the beautiful lady,” Lexa told the bartender. “Another double for me.”

“Did you know,” Clarke whispered, the sultry slipping into her voice as she leaned her chin on her girlfriend’s shoulder, “how absolutely sexy I find it when you order me a drink?”

“Is that why when I order smoothies for us, I get lucky.”

“We all have our kinks,” Clarke chuckled before thanking the bartender and earning a wary look from Lexa.

“I wish you’d stop calling everything kinks.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

With a roll of her eyes, Lexa allowed Clarke to win the battle and tug her toward a familiar group of friends, stuck in an intense debate about something that Lexa actually enjoyed. She even outlasted her girlfriend, past their normal signal to try to sneak out was initiated.

“I just want tacos,” Clarke groaned as she tugged Lexa toward their coats. “I don’t care if they’re good or bad. Tacos are always good.”

“It’s ten minutes farther, but much better,” Lexa argued. “Why does proximity have to dictate what we eat when we know superior tacos are down by the bay?”

“But our house is the opposite way, and our house is where the bed is, and these heels are killing me and I just want food, sex, and sleep, in that order– oh, sorry.”

The whine that amused Lexa to no ends was immediately cut off as Clarke bumped into another body with a little more force than usual. The amusement ended almost instantly, to some degree, as the body turned around.

“I’m so sorry, I was just– Lexa?” Costia cocked her head and stared at the writer, ignoring the body that bumped into her own, catching her off guard and spilling some of her drink.

“Hello.”

Both just stared at each other, sizing up what time had done to them, picking out the parts that changed, that stayed the same, and then debating whether or not they’d always been that way, or if their minds had crafted littler alternatives and imperfections.

Clarke cleared her throat and rubbed Lexa’s back.

“Oh, sorry. Yes. Um. Costia, this is my much more talented, much less graceful better half, Clarke Griffin. Clarke, this is Costia.”

“Much less graceful,” Clarke repeated with a smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” she forced a smile.

She was gorgeous, but Clarke knew that already. An intense afternoon of weakness was spent looking into Lexa’s ex, as any normal person would conduct upon entering a new relationship. A writer herself, she was not as good as Lexa, in Clarke’s literary opinion. She certainly wasn’t a nice or good person either, in her personal estimation.

“It’s been… what? Three years?”

“Four years,” Lexa quickly interrupted. “Four years.”

“How’s Simon?”

“Who’s Simon?” Clarke interrupted.

“The cat,” Costia furrowed. “You didn’t get rid of him, did you?”

“Oh, you must mean Jeff.”

“You renamed our cat Jeff?” the ex shook her head and frowned.

“He likes it better,” Lexa nodded.

Clarke sensed the impending weirdness as the standoff commenced. She felt Lexa squeeze her hip as she held her close.

“How long have you two been together?” Costia asked, ignoring Lexa’s simple explanation, hiding the sting of moving on.

“Oh, about two years now?” Lexa asked, looking to her date for confirmation. “Going well, wouldn’t you say?”

“Going great,” Clarke chuckled and nodded.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

There was an awkwardness between them all, and no one knew how to escape it. There were years and years and miles and time and distance between where they’d once been, and where they were, and yet Clarke couldn’t shake the nagging protective anger against the Ex, as irrational as it was, and she certainly couldn’t shake the feeling of contempt that she’d seen her girlfriend naked. That was the real kicker.

“I read the novel. It was impressive. Well received. I could see little bits in it of all those things you kept raving about,” Costia offered. “I didn’t get it, but you saw it. I meant to say congratulations, but it felt weird.”

“Thank you,” Lexa smiled. “It’s still doing well. Been trying something new with the current project.”

“Care to share anything?”

“You know the answer already.”

Despite the time and place and distance, they shared a knowing smile.

“And what is it that you do?” Costia turned to Clarke and waited.

“Oh, not much, I paint–”

“She does these big, beautiful, colorful paintings,” Lexa interrupted the modesty. “And I didn’t get them at first, but then, it clicked. And they feel like… they feel like things.”

“And you’re talking about feelings,” Costia whistle quietly, amazed at the display. “They must be something.”

“They really are though,” the writer nodded eagerly, beaming.

“I can’t beli–”

“I’m sorry,” Lexa stopped her. “But we have a date with a fish taco truck, and I see Anya making her way toward me.”

“Which means we have to run,” Clarke chuckled.

“It was nice to see you.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Costia,” the artist smiled. “I’m sorry for being clumsy.”

“No harm no foul,” Costia nodded, perplexed at the almost happiness and joy on her ex’s face, a state of which she’d never seen it before. “Nice to see you. Keep in touch.”

“Alright,” Lexa nodded.

Before she could offer anything else, she watched Lexa begin to slip through the crowd. Bewildered, Costia stood there and watched them leave. She watched Lexa kiss Clarke’s temple as she put her arm over her shoulder, and they both laughed at something meant just for them.

She wasn’t jealous, or at least that was what she told herself. More so, she was simply amazed.


End file.
